An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging Sixties Volume 2: 1966–68

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable and highly enigmatic literary personality. Waguih Ghali (1930?–69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali’s Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London’s swinging sixties. Volume 2 covers the period from 1966 to 1968. Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali’s trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile. Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with Ghali’s cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta.

In this interview Hawas explains what Waguih Ghali’s writing means for her and how she got involved in editing the diaries of this enigmatic and fascinating Egyptian writer, pacifist, and savvy political commentator.

The Last Ottoman Princess

Murat Bardakçi Translated byMeyzi Baran

Twice a princess, twice exiled, Neslishah Sultan had an eventful life. When she was born in Istanbul in 1921, cannons were fired in the four corners of the Ottoman Empire, commemorative coins were issued in her name, and her birth was recorded in the official register of the palace. After all, she was an imperial princess and the granddaughter of Sultan Vahiddedin. But she was the last member of the imperial family to be accorded such honors: in 1922 Vahiddedin was deposed and exiled, replaced as caliph—but not as sultan—by his brother (and Neslishah’s other grandfather) Abdülmecid; in 1924 Abdülmecid was also removed from office, and the entire imperial family, including three-year-old Neslishah, was sent into exile. Sixteen years later on her marriage to Prince Abdel Moneim, the son of the last khedive of Egypt, she became a princess of the Egyptian royal family. And when in 1952 her husband was appointed regent for Egypt’s infant king, she took her place at the peak of Egyptian society as the country’s first lady, until the abolition of the monarchy the following year. Exile followed once more, this time from Egypt, after the royal couple faced charges of treason. Eventually Neslishah was allowed to return to the city of her birth, where she died at the age of 91 in 2012. Based on original documents and extensive personal interviews, this account of one woman’s extraordinary life is also the story of the end of two powerful dynasties thirty years apart.

A Biography

In Egypt, Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) is now generally remembered as a great scholar and a patriot, a great renewer of Islam, one of those who awakened the nation—though the details of this greatness have grown somewhat fuzzy with time. Among scholars, in the Muslim world and the west, he is known as Islam’s leading modernist. For some, his modernism consisted of creating a synthesis of Islam and modern thought; for others, it consisted of the bridge he built between the old world and the new. Some see him as having revived true Islam, some as having proposed an alternative to true Islam. One question that this new biography addresses, then, is quite what his modernism consisted of. Another question is where his modernism came from. And a final question is what happened to it after his death.

Invading the Middle East

In 1798, for the first time since the Crusades, western armies landed in the Middle East, initiating a confrontation with far-reaching implications. The French, infused with the fire of revolution and republicanism, and imbued with the idealism of the Enlightenment, set out for glory and riches. Their invasion of Egypt, a rebellious province of the sprawling Ottoman Empire, also aimed to weaken British communications with India. They were led by an ambitious and charismatic young general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Shedding new light on the ensuing events, acclaimed historian Juan Cole tells this stirring story through the experiences of soldiers and observers on both sides of the conflict—giving full voice to Muslim points of view. He highlights the mutual incomprehension and the attempts to understand the opportunities and limits of exchange between the two branches of Mediterranean civilization. Beyond detailing the machinations of the French high command, Cole paints a vivid tableau of personal encounters—French scientists seeking to increase their knowledge in a new landscape, French soldiers pursuing romantic dalliances across cultures, and peasants and tribesmen launching determined insurrections. From the unprecedented intellectual challenge for Muslim religious figures to the new public roles adopted by Egyptian women, Napoleon’s impact went beyond the battlefield and still resonates in modern relations between the west and the Middle East.

My Husband

Gamal Abdel Nasser, architect of Egypt’s 1952 Revolution, president of the country from 1956 to 1970, hero to millions across the Arab world since the Suez Crisis, was also a family man, a devoted husband and father who kept his private life largely private. In 1973, three years after his early passing at the age of 52, his wife Tahia wrote a memoir of her beloved husband for her family. The family then waited almost forty years, through the presidencies of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, both unsympathetic to the memory of Nasser, before publishing Tahia’s book in Arabic for the first time in 2011. Now this unique insight into the life of one of the giants of the twentieth century is finally available in English. Accompanied by more than one hundred photographs from the family archive, many never before published, this historic book tells the story of Gamal and Tahia’s life together from their marriage in 1944, through the Revolution and Gamal’s career on the world stage, revealing an unknown and intimate picture of the man behind the president. “At 6:30am on the morning of July 23, 1952 there was a knock on the door. Tharwat Okasha shook my hand and congratulated me: ‘The military coup has succeeded.’ I asked him about Gamal. ‘He is close by, not more than five minutes away at the General Command.’ At 9:30am an officer called: he had come from the General Command at Kubri al-Qubba, sent by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser to tell me that he was fine and would not be home for lunch.”

Egypt’s Free Officers and the July RevolutionWith a New Preface

This essential book explores the early years of military rule following the Free Officers’ coup of 1952. Enriched by interviews with actors in and observers of the events, Nasser’s Blessed Movement shows how the officers’ belief in a quick reformation by force was transformed into a vital, long-term process that changed the face of Egypt. Under Gamal Abdel Nasser, the military regime launched an ambitious program of political, social, and economic reform. Egypt became a leader in Arab and non-aligned politics, as well as a model for political mobilization and national development throughout the Third World. Although Nasser exerted considerable personal influence over the course of events, his rise as a national and regional hero in the mid-1950s was preceded by a period in which he and his colleagues groped for direction, and in which many Egyptians disliked—even feared—them. Joel Gordon analyzes the goals, programs, successes, and failures of the young regime, providing the most comprehensive account of the Egyptian revolution to date. This edition includes a new Introduction that looks back at the post-1952 period from a post-2011 perspective.

1500–1800

Based on the Hamilton A.R. Gibb Lectures given by Nelly Hanna at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, this groundbreaking book will be of interest to all those looking for a different perspective on the history of south–north relations. Aiming to place Egypt clearly in the context of some of the major worldwide transformations of the three centuries from 1500 to 1800, Professor Hanna questions the mainstream view that has identified the main sources of modern world history as the Reformation, the expansion of Europe into America and Asia, the formation of trading companies, and scientific discoveries. She adds to the debate by showing that there were worldwide trends that touched Egypt, India, southeast Asia, and Europe: in all these areas, for example, there were linguistic shifts that brought the written language closer to the spoken word. She also demonstrates that technology and know-how, far from being centered only in Europe, flowed in different directions: for instance, in the eighteenth century, French entrepreneurs were trying to imitate the techniques of bleaching and dyeing of cloth that they found in Egypt and other Ottoman localities.

Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean

In the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly migrated northward to Egypt and other eastern Mediterranean destinations, yet relatively little is known about them. Studies have focused mainly on the mamluk and harem slaves of elite households, who were mostly white, and on abolitionist efforts to end the slave trade, and most have relied heavily on western language sources. In the past forty years new sources have become available, ranging from Egyptian religious and civil court and police records to rediscovered archives and accounts in western archives and libraries. Along with new developments in the study of African slavery these sources provide a perspective on the lives of non-elite trans-Saharan Africans in nineteenth century Egypt and beyond. The nine essays in this volume examine the lives of slaves and freed men and women in Egypt and the region. Contributors: Kenneth M. Cuno, Y. Hakan Erdem, Michael Ferguson, Emad Ahmad Helal Shams al-Din, Liat Kozma, George Michael La Rue, Ahmad A. Sikainga, Eve M. Troutt Powell, and Terence Walz.

1919–1952

Re-Envisioning Egypt, 1919–1952 presents new and often dismissed aspects of the constitutional monarchy era in Egyptian history. It demonstrates that many of the domestic and regional sociopolitical and cultural changes credited to the 1952 revolutionaries actually began in the decades before the July coup. Arguing against the predominant view of the pre-revolutionary era in Egypt as one of creeping decay, the volume restores understandings of the 1919–1952 years as integral to modern nation–state formation and social transformation. The book’s contributors show that Egypt’s real revolutions were long-term processes emerging over several decades prior to 1952. The leaders of the 1952 coup capitalized on these developments, yet earlier changes in Egyptian society fundamentally facilitated their actions and policies. This volume includes revisionist discussion of domestic political issues and foreign policy; the military, education, social reform, and class; as well as popular media, art, and literature. By introducing new approaches to these under-appreciated categories of analysis through exploration of untapped sources and by re-examining the political context of the time, Re-Envisioning Egypt, 1919–1952 proposes innovative methodologies for understanding this crucial period in Egyptian history, casting these years as fundamental to the country’s twentieth-century trajectory. Contributors: Tewfik Aclimandos, Malak Badrawi, Andrew Flibbert, Nancy Gallagher, Arthur Goldschmidt, Mervat Hatem, Misako Ikeda, Amy J. Johnson, Anne-Claire Kerboeuf, Samia Kholoussi, Hanan Kholoussy, Fred Lawson, Shaun T. Lopez, Scott David McIntosh, Roger Owen, Lucie Ryzova, Barak A. Salmoni, James Whidden, Caroline Williams.

Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East

On 26 July 1956, the British Empire received a blow from which it could never recover, when President Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, one of the gems of Britain’s imperial portfolio. Britain, France, and Israel subsequently colluded in attacking Egypt, ostensibly—in the case of Britain and France—to protect the Suez Canal but in reality in an attempt to depose Nasser. The US opposition to this scheme forced an ignominious withdrawal, leaving Nasser triumphant and marking a decisive end to Britain’s imperial era. In this, the seminal work on the Suez Crisis, Keith Kyle draws on a wealth of documentary evidence to tell this fascinating political, military, and diplomatic story. Including new introductory material, this revised edition of a classic work will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the twentieth century and the end of empire.

Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire

In the late nineteenth century, an active slave trade sustained social and economic networks across the Ottoman Empire and throughout Egypt, Sudan, the Caucasus, and Western Europe. Unlike the Atlantic trade, slavery in this region crossed and mixed racial and ethnic lines. Fair-skinned Circassian men and women were as vulnerable to enslavement in the Nile Valley as were teenagers from Sudan or Ethiopia. Tell This in My Memory opens up a new window in the study of slavery in the modern Middle East, taking up personal narratives of slaves and slave owners to shed light on the anxieties and intimacies of personal experience. The framework of racial identity constructed through these stories proves instrumental in explaining how countries later confronted—or not—the legacy of the slave trade. Today, these vocabularies of slavery live on for contemporary refugees whose forced migrations often replicate the journeys and stigmas faced by slaves in the nineteenth century.

This lavishly illustrated history of the AUC describes expansion problems, cultural and religious differences, strains in American-Egyptian relations in the 1950s and 1960s, and looks at how the university’s fortunes have been linked to the major historical events of this century.

Prized for their stamina and their acclimation to the harsh conditions of the Arabian deserts, the ancestors of the horses that are now recognized as the Egyptian Arabian purebred horse entered Egypt centuries ago, establishing the valuable bloodlines of the breed there. The breeding programs in Egypt therefore became the root source for the finest Arabian horses, attracting passionate enthusiasts from all corners of the world. Artists, poets, and historians have for centuries been inspired by their great beauty and romantic legacy. Nasr Marei is the third-generation owner of a stud farm in Giza, Egypt. His love for and knowledge of the Egyptian Arabian horse, coupled with his sensitive and striking photography, have inspired this visual tribute. His extraordinary photographs, accompanied by text that traces the history and evolution of the Arabian’s journey into Egypt, celebrate the lineage of this living treasure of Egyptian heritage.

Prized for their stamina and their acclimation to the harsh conditions of the Arabian deserts, the ancestors of the horses that are now recognized as the Egyptian Arabian purebred horse entered Egypt centuries ago, establishing the valuable bloodlines of the breed there. The breeding programs in Egypt therefore became the root source for the finest Arabian horses, attracting passionate enthusiasts from all corners of the world. Artists, poets, and historians have for centuries been inspired by their great beauty and romantic legacy. Nasr Marei is the third-generation owner of a stud farm in Giza, Egypt. His love for and knowledge of the Egyptian Arabian horse, coupled with his sensitive and striking photography, have inspired this visual tribute. His extraordinary photographs, accompanied by text that traces the history and evolution of the Arabian’s journey into Egypt, celebrate the lineage of this living treasure of Egyptian heritage.

and the Origins of Radical Islam

Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) was an influential Egyptian ideologue credited with establishing the theoretical basis for radical Islamism in the post-colonial Sunni Muslim world. lacking a pure understanding of his life and work, the popular media have conflated Qutb’s moral purpose with the aims of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. He is often portrayed as a terrorist, Islamo-Fascist, and advocate of murder. This book rescues Qutb from misrepresentation, tracing the evolution of his thought within the context of his time, recounting Qutb’s life from the small village in which he was raised to his execution at the behest of Abd al-Nasser’s regime. His study remains sensitive to the cultural, political, social, and economic circumstances that shaped Qutb’s thought—major developments that composed one of the most eventful periods in Egyptian history. Only in response to his harrowing experience in prison did Qutb come to regard Islam and kufr (infidelity) as oppositional, antithetical, and therefore mutually exclusive. Calvert shows how Qutb repackaged and reformulated the Islamic heritage to pose a challenge to authority, including those who claimed (falsely, he believed) to be Muslim.

Islamic Law and Custom in the Courts of Ottoman Cairo

In this new study, the author examines sijills, the official documents of the Ottoman Islamic courts, to understand how sharia law, society, and the early-modern economy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Cairo related to the practice of custom in determining rulings. In the sixteenth century, a new legal and cultural orthodoxy fostered the development of an early-modern Islam that broke new ground, giving rise to a new concept of the citizen and his role. Contrary to the prevailing scholarly view, this work adopts the position that local custom began to diminish and decline as a source of authority. These issues resonate today, several centuries later, in the continuing discussions of individual rights in relation to Islamic law.

An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging Sixties Volume 2: 1966–68

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable and highly enigmatic literary personality. Waguih Ghali (1930?–69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali’s Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London’s swinging sixties. Volume 2 covers the period from 1966 to 1968. Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali’s trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile. Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with Ghali’s cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta.

In this interview Hawas explains what Waguih Ghali’s writing means for her and how she got involved in editing the diaries of this enigmatic and fascinating Egyptian writer, pacifist, and savvy political commentator.

An Egyptian Family Story

Cotton made the fortune of the Fuuda family, Egyptian landed gentry with peasant origins, during the second part of the nineteenth century. This story, narrated and photographed by a family member who has researched and documented various aspects of her own history, goes well beyond the family photo album to become an attempt to convey how cotton, as the main catalyst and creator of wealth, produced by the beginning of the twentieth century two entirely separate worlds: one privileged and free, the other surviving at a level of bare subsistence, and indentured. The construction of lavish mansions in the Nile Delta countryside and the landowners’ adoption of European lifestyles are juxtaposed visually with the former laborers’ camp of the permanent workers, which became a village (‘izba), and then an urbanized settlement. The story is retold from the perspective of both the landowners and the former workers who were tied to the ‘izba. The book includes family photo albums, photographs of political campaigns and of banquets in the countryside, documents and accounting books, modern portraits of the peasants, and pictures of daily life in the village today. This is a story that fuses the personal and emotional with the scholar’s detached ethnographic reporting—a truly fascinating, informative, and colorful view of life on both sides of a uniquely Egyptian socio-economic institution, and a vanished world: the cotton estate.

An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging SixtiesVolume 1: 1964–66

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable and highly enigmatic literary personality. Waguih Ghali (1930?–69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali’s Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London’s swinging sixties. Volume 1 tells of Ghali’s life in Rheydt, West Germany, providing unique insights from the perspective of an Egyptian immigrant on postwar Germany and shedding light on Ghali’s own writing and personality when he was at the peak of his depression. This volume also includes his reminiscences of his childhood in Alexandria and Cairo, drawing in bittersweet nostalgia a picture of a bygone era in Egypt, while in the background loom what would become milestone events in his adopted countries in subsequent decades: the Treblinka trials and the gains of the National Democratic Party in Germany and the rise of the Labour Party in Britain. Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with celebrated literary editor Diana Athill OBE, the Diaries bring together those most familiar with Ghali’s life and work, and offer a fresh take on a distinctive author and a vibrant decade.

In this interview Hawas explains what Waguih Ghali’s writing means for her and how she got involved in editing the diaries of this enigmatic and fascinating Egyptian writer, pacifist, and savvy political commentator.

From the early nineteenth century through to the 1960s, the Greeks formed the largest, most economically powerful, and geographically and socially diverse of all European communities in Egypt. Although they benefited from the privileges extended to foreigners and the control exercised by Britain, they claimed nonetheless to enjoy a special relationship with Egypt and the Egyptians, and saw themselves as contributors to the country’s modernization. The Greeks and the Making of Modern Egypt is the first account of the modern Greek presence in Egypt from its beginnings during the era of Muhammad Ali to its final days under Nasser. It casts a critical eye on the reality and myths surrounding the complex and ubiquitous Greek community in Egypt by examining the Greeks’ legal status, their relations with the country’s rulers, their interactions with both elite and ordinary Egyptians, their economic activities, their contacts with foreign communities, their ties to their Greek homeland, and their community life, which included a rich and celebrated literary culture. Alexander Kitroeff suggests that although the Greeks’ self-image as contributors to Egypt’s development is exaggerated, there were ways in which they functioned as agents of modernity, albeit from a privileged and protected position. While they never gained the acceptance they sought, the Greeks developed an intense and nostalgic love affair with Egypt after their forced departure in the 1950s and 1960s and resettlement in Greece and farther afield. This rich and engaging history of the Greeks in Egypt in the modern era will appeal to students, scholars, travelers, and general readers alike.

Friends at a Slight Angle

The English novelist E.M. Forster and the Greek–Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy met when Forster was working for the Red Cross in Alexandria during the First World War. Their subsequent correspondence bears witness to a complex relationship and serves as a fascinating testament to Forster’s relentless determination to promote Cavafy by bringing out an English translation of his work. The letters also chronicle Cavafy’s calculated refusal to comply fully with Forster’s plans. The story they tell involves a number of major twentieth century literary personalities—Arnold Toynbee, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Lawrence, and Leonard Woolf all participated in Forster’s early translation project. Forster ultimately succeeded in launching Cavafy’s reputation in the English-speaking world, setting an important precedent for his present global literary fame. The volume includes all extant letters, the earliest Cavafy translations by George Valassopoulos (incorporating Cavafy’s own authorial emendations), poems by E.M. Forster, archival photographs, and related letters.